THE DUSTY KNUCKLE - HACKNEY

THE DUSTY KNUCKLE

The Dusty Knuckle is a bakery and café located in London’s Dalston and Harringay neighbourhoods.  They are a purpose driven business: striving to use their busy operations to help at-risk youth take forward steps in their lives through on-the-job training and mentorship.

I can’t for the life of me remember how I first came across the Dalston based Dusty Knuckle. I think it may well have been in the search for my beloved Violet Bakery, also in Hackney. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, the important thing is that I found it!

This unassuming and externally not particularly inviting in the midst of an autumn downpour, when I first came across it, cafe offers up more than you could ever imagine. When we first stepped inside, I was immediately completely over excited at the bread & pastry. Our order of custard based pastries, fruit filled doughnuts, crunchy breads, sausage rolls, sourdough sandwiches, chocolate croissant and more didn’t even scratch the surface..and yes we did completely over order but we ate and adored all of those delicasies and could well in hind sight have ordered even more. The madest thing is that we ordered cupcakes from Violet Bakery immediately afterwards!

It was buzzing at the Dusty Knuckle, service was friendly and warm but it was clear that people had a purpose here and that purpose was not so much serving you as it was making and baking damn good pastries and breads. That’s fine with me.

The main takeaway for us was the roast chicken sourdough sandwich. Fortunately my husband and I are well matched when it come to our immense appreciation for fine flavours and just how much value to asign to the importance of a good sandwich on a long haul flight. We were flying to Australia the next day and we agreed that we should certainly order 2 extra sandwiches to take onto the plane with us! Our family mocked us, as usually happens, but also as usually happens we were the envy of all of them when the time came for us to unwrap our perfectly moist and matured roasted chicken sandwiches and for them to tuck into their not so appealing aeroplane foil wrapped mysterious plate.

So thank you Dusty Knuckle for the perfect sandwich.

You must go out of you way, which it likely will be, to make sure that you experience this gem. It is a must.

https://www.thedustyknuckle.com

Monday - Bread, coffee and pastry only
8:00am-1:00pm

Tuesday - Sunday
8:00am-3:30pm